'The Haunting Of Hill House' Review: Perfect Bingeing For Halloween

One of the most dynamic shifts to come out of the age of streaming media is the advent of season-specific television -- and there is no season more perfectly themed to its media than Halloween. This is what makes a series like The Haunting of Hill House perfect for Netflix at this time of the year.

Based on Shirley Jackson’s acclaimed 1959 novel of the same name, The Haunting of Hill House follows the lives of various siblings who are forced to reconnect at their childhood home -- now one of the most infamous haunted houses in history -- following a family tragedy.

The Haunting of Hill House is decent and very much strives for a more classical horror vibe relying less on gore and more on supernatural scares. Less Saw and more Insidious. One of the biggest criticisms is that these moments of terror feel few and far between as we dive deep, but slowly, into the life of this seemingly cursed family.

On the front of that family, the best thing the show has going for the plot line is the quality of its performances. Every player in the series from Carla Gugino and Timothy Hutton to Elizabeth Reaser and Oliver Jackson-Cohen works overtime to portray a truly unsettling environment.

The best thing this series has going for it, however, is not any one of its elements individually but rather how they come together as a whole in connection to the October television season. This is a horror show through and through. Family drama or not, it’s a show out to scare and on that front, it succeeds from the get-go and makes for perfect Halloween bingeing along with everyone’s various slasher movie marathons.

There is no single stand-out element in The Haunting of Hill House but it does come together nicely overall. The acting, the ambiance, the jump scares, they absolutely play right and serve the horror season well. It’s very much a show that takes advantage of the fact it doesn’t have to abide by a weekly release that lines up perfectly with the lead-in and lead-out of Halloween. It’s a show that just presents as is and should have no trouble finding its audience heading into October.